Reductions in blood pressure during a community-based overweight and obesity treatment in children and adolescents with prehypertension and hypertension

Due to the pandemic of childhood obesity and thus obesity-related hypertension, improvements in treatment availability are needed. hence, we investigated whether reductions in blood pressure (bp) would occur in children with overweight and obesity exhibiting prehypertension/hypertension during a community-based overweight and obesity treatment program, and if changes in body mass index (bmi) are associated with changes in bp. the study included 663 children aged 3–18 years with a bmi ⩾85th percentile for sex and age that entered treatment from june 2012 to january 2015. height, weight and bp were measured upon entry and every 3–6 months. bmi and bp s.d. scores (sdss) were calculated according to sex and age, or sex, age and height. prehypertension was defined as a bp sds ⩾1.28 and <1.65. hypertension was defined as a bp sds ⩾1.65. upon entry, 52% exhibited prehypertension (11.9%) or exhibited hypertension (40.1%). after 12 months (range: 3–29) of treatment, 29.3% of the children with prehypertension/hypertension were normotensive. children with systolic prehypertension/hypertension upon entry reduced their systolic bp sdss by 0.31 (95% confidence interval (ci): 0.70–0.83, p<0.0001). children with diastolic prehypertension/hypertension upon entry reduced their diastolic bp sdss by 0.78 (95% ci: 0.78–0.86, p<0.0001). bmi sds changes were positively associated with bp sds changes (p<0.0001). nonetheless, some children reduced bp sdss while increasing their bmi sdss, and prehypertension/hypertension developed in 23.3% of the normotensive children despite reductions in bmi sdss (p<0.0001). these results suggest that community-based overweight and obesity treatment can reduce bp, and thus may help improve treatment availability.